


One Day You'll Remember

by RunLikeRain



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 18:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4887667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunLikeRain/pseuds/RunLikeRain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ianto considers life and death and Jack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Day You'll Remember

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written a week or so after Children of Earth Day Four aired for the first time. I was very interested in that scene from Ianto's point of view, and thought that he'd probably be more worried about Jack than himself. The title is from a Patty Griffin song.

Ianto was dying. He thought that maybe he should be a little more distressed about that than he was...but then again maybe not. It had only been a matter of time, really. No one lived long working for Torchwood and the number of reprieves he'd gotten in the past meant that the odds had been well and truly against him for quite some time. In his darker moments, Ianto wondered if that promise of a shortened life was the reason he had been so determined to stick with Torchwood after Lisa. The reality though was that each time he'd come so harrowingly close to death, he had wanted to live. He certainly didn't want to die now, but it seemed that the decision had finally been taken out of his hands.

Jack spun away from the glass tank (bullet-proof, of course it was) and gripped Ianto's shoulders.

"We've got to get you out of here," Jack said. "I can survive anything, but you can't!"

Ianto stared at him a moment, having a surprising amount of trouble forming the words he needed to say. "Too late," he said at last. His voice sounded dull and listless even to his own ears. "I breathed the air."

"There's gotta be something, there's gotta be an antidote!"

Jack knew, too. Ianto could see it in the tears that were already filling his eyes, and he could hear it in the pitch of Jack's voice even as he raged against the 456. He wanted to speak, to try to calm Jack down, but he found that without the steadying influence of Jack's hands on his arms he was swaying on his feet. He half turned, dimly wondering if there was a chair nearby, but the slight movement unbalanced him and his legs no longer seemed capable of supporting his weight. He collapsed, saved from cracking his head on the smooth marble floor by Jack's quick reflexes.

He wondered what death would be like. Jack had always told him that there was nothing, just darkness. That's what Owen said, too, and Suzie, and everyone else that they'd ever brought back with that damned glove. But Ianto had always privately believed that they were wrong. He thought that maybe the living simply weren't meant to remember. He thought of it as a dream, rich and peaceful, that slips away the moment you wake in the morning.

"It's all my fault," Jack said.

"It's not," he replied, and it wasn't. Jack couldn't have kept him from coming along if he'd tried short of knocking him out completely. And he couldn't have known how it'd turn out.

"Don't speak. Save your breath."

He'd have laughed if he could've. No amount of saving his breath was going to help him. The futility of Jack's words, the dogged hope Jack clung to that something like that might matter even as the tears streamed down his face, nearly broke Ianto's heart. There were so many things he'd wished he'd said when he had the time and the breath but not the courage. He settled for one, the most important, the one he'd always been the most frightened of saying and that Jack had always been the most frightened of hearing.

"I love you." It felt like a confession, and the power of it was overwhelming. He hated that he was starting to cry. Jack would think that he was scared, or in pain, and he didn't want Jack to think that. He didn't want Jack to hurt any more than he already would.

"Don't," Jack said. The finality of Ianto's words had shaken away the few remaining shreds of denial, and Jack was beginning to crumble. Ianto wanted to say something, anything, to comfort him, but he was so tired. He closed his eyes. Just for a moment, he thought.

"Ianto...Ianto? Ianto stay with me. Ianto, stay with me, please. Stay with me, stay with me please!"

Ianto opened his eyes and tried to focus on Jack again. It wasn't as easy as it should have been. "Hey," he said, "It was good, yeah?" Because it was. It was more than good, and he was afraid Jack would forget that. Jack did that sometimes, dwelling on the sadness and the loss and forgetting the joy.

"Yeah."

He wondered how many times in the past Jack had watched a lover die, and how many times he'd have to face it again. The endless march of years that had always been so far beyond Ianto's grasp was suddenly terribly clear. His heart broke for Jack all over again, destined to be alone for the long stretch of eternity. Who was he, who could he be, in that boundless space? A blip in time was, perhaps, being generous.

"Don't forget me," he pleaded, and the tears came again, for himself this time.

"Never could." his voice was a little stronger, a little surer, and Ianto was dismayed to find that he couldn't tell if Jack was sincere or if he was putting on one of his many masks in an effort to comfort a dying man. It hardly mattered. Ianto knew his request was unreasonable, and the assurance impossible.

"A thousand years time....you won't remember me."

"Yes, I will. I promise, I will."

Ianto wanted to reply but his ability to form words had abandoned him at last. As death goes, he thought, it could have been worse. There was pain but it was distant, as if it belonged to someone else. Still, it was death and his body was fighting even as his mind quieted. He wished he could control the little jerky movements he knew he was making because it was going to be hard for Jack to see him struggle. He wished he could tell Jack that he believed him, that he knew Jack always kept his promises. He wished he could tell Jack that he wasn't scared anymore, that he wasn't in any real pain, and that he knew that Jack loved him.

And in the end, when Jack's pleas were little more than a distant murmur and Ianto's hold on life was slipping away at last, he could see that Jack's journey had an end. You're not forever, Jack, I promise, he thought, and his last thought before slipping into darkness was to hope that somehow, Jack would hear.


End file.
